Pam Theodotou’s “Byrd 1933” to Premiere at The Wexner Center!

Last week we featured an interview with Pam Theodotou (CCAD MFA 2013) about her passion for bringing together the art and science communities. This week, we’re excited to announce that her film, Byrd 1933, will be premiering at The Wexner Center on October 20 at 7:00 PM!

The 90-minute film is comprised of footage taken by Admiral Byrd. Byrd was a celebrated aviator who drew much attention to polar regions of the world by pioneering the technology needed to explore them.

As described by Pam –

“Byrd 1933 is a found footage film. The clips were shot from 1933-1934 by Admiral Byrd on his expedition to Antarctica. He was working with Paramount Studios cameramen at the time so the images are gorgeous. Reels of these films were eventually donated to the Byrd Archive at OSU, but many of them had deteriorated. The Archive conserved what it could and I took on the project to try and craft a film from what was there. It is largely a silent film with music, but it does have clips of Byrd’s voice as well as recordings of natural sounds from Antarctica pulled from the archive that were recorded by phonograph on the expedition.”

The project could not have happened without the years of preservation and digital transferring that were required to make the film.

From the The Wexner Center’s press release –

“Through extensive archival research in Byrd’s own papers, filmmaker Pamela I. Theodotou has painstakingly cataloged film clips using the scripts for Byrd’s lectures, crafting a film that captures the expedition as a whole.”

Following the screening, a panel including Pam and researchers from Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center will follow.